Host

So I have a site that's currently being hosted by WP's free blog host. I've been making some money with this site, but is it limiting my income? Should I really switch over to payed hosting? Are the benefits worth the switch? For example, when you host it yourself, you're now more susceptible to being hacked. One disadvantage that I've noticed from having it through WP's default blog host is that my aff links get disabled. WP.com has a PR of 9, does this affect me in any way if I switch?

And finally, since I'm weighing out the options.. Most hosts seem to all have the same basic things:
>Unlimited Bandwith
>99.9% Uptime Guaranteed
>Disk Space
etc...

What makes a host superior? What should I be looking for?

Thanks in advance,

-sn0rt

1) Bandwith is never unlimited. Dare you to try and push 20tb. You'll probably be kicked off around 300-500 gigs.
2) Guaranteed uptime is bullshit unless they have a 99.9% Uptime SLA. The different between "Guaranteed 99.9% uptime" and "99.9% Uptime SLA" is that the first is marketing. The second is a commitment from the host. If they fail to deliver, you get discounts/free hosting. If they say anything about a % uptime and you can't find the SLA in their legal section, skip them.
3) Disk space is also limited. If it says unlimited, try hosting many large files.


What you should be looking for in quality hosting:
1) Limited space, limited bandwith. If a host gives you limits, you know what they are and the host knows what they can expect. Its a win for both parties.
2) Uptime SLA. No SLA, no signup.
3) Good reviews on webhostingtalk.com . Usually if I don't see any reviews or the company advertising on there, I skip them as well.
4) Upgrade paths. This may not be useful to you since you're just starting out with a blog but I usually look to see what the upgrade path is. Do they offer a VPS, Dedicated, Cloud? If so, will their offerings and pricing be inline with my expected requirements?
5) Response time. Send in a ticket at 2am their time with alot of questions and gauge their response time. Anything over 18 hours is an immediate no.
6) Hardware and software. I also like to see what they have to offer on both. Hardware I'm mainly looking to see if they use 7200 sata, 15k SAS, SSD RAID 10 etc... Essentially what type of performance I can expect from that. Then I look at what control panel they offer. When I'm in a rush or lazy, I go for cpanel (shared) or cpanel+whm (vps/dedi). Also, what are they using to serve websites? Normally its apache, but for faster load/response times you should be looking at litespeed, nginx, cherokee etc.
7) Do they offer a dedicated IP? Most of my sites are ecommerce or require secure viewing which means a dedicated IP for SSL certificates.


I know what I want, I know what it normally costs and I don't expect anything less than top quality for anything I deem mission critical. If you're not banking hard, you can just go with hostgator. Easy $7/month hosting with decent support and not horribly oversold servers.

Thank you for taking the time and answering those questions.

But is keeping it on WPs free blog hosting servers limiting my income? Should I really switch over to payed hosting? Are the benefits worth the switch? For example, when you host it yourself, you're now more susceptible to being hacked. One disadvantage that I've noticed from having it through WP's default blog host is that my aff links get disabled. WP.com has a PR of 9, does this affect me in any way if I switch?

I would recommend you to go for paid hosting. Free hosting company does not provide any uptime, backup guarantee. So you can lose your data any time.

Give up all free hosting ,
be a professional and go to professional hosting service.

Get a paid hosting and which has good reviews in market...

Free hostings are usually unsafe for your website and it gets hacked easily......

Thanks..

sn0rt said:

Thank you for taking the time and answering those questions.

But is keeping it on WPs free blog hosting servers limiting my income? Should I really switch over to payed hosting? Are the benefits worth the switch? For example, when you host it yourself, you're now more susceptible to being hacked. One disadvantage that I've noticed from having it through WP's default blog host is that my aff links get disabled. WP.com has a PR of 9, does this affect me in any way if I switch?

Click to expand...

It may be limiting income or it may not be. I don't run your blog so I wouldnt be able to tell.

Switching does make you more susceptible to hacking, but you get the freedom to do anything you want. Just keep backups and don't install every plugin under the sun and you should be fine. Also don't use brand new plugins or less-used ones.

Having a PR of 9 does help, but it's normally always worth it to switch to your own hosting.

Hello,

I suggest you to get webhosting, page me privatly maybe we can make deal .

Kind regards,